This piece of writing is about a group of men who have been kept virtually prisoner, in a cave or a cave-like chamber, chained by their leg and neck to a chair since childhood. Plato explores step by step what would happen if one of these prisoners was to be unchained and what would happen afterwards. He speaks about not only the physical pain they would feel, but the wonderment they would feel at being "enlightened" and exposed to the actual physical world around them. I believe that Plato basically means to show us that he believes people who live in a certain "untainted ignorance" may actually live a better, happier life, then many people who are in power, many of whom only seek to attain more power, and ruin their lives and the lives of whom they represent in the process. E.g.: Power hungry president makes enemies with too many other countries and causes war between his country and others.
